Delavega: a short story idea.

Delavega is a character i've had for awhile, and was also the protagonist in my detective piece, this and last year. He's always been a character I would have loved to put into a comic or something. Delavega is a guy with very large red eyes who is able to see and talk to the dead. There is actually a system to this. Some ghosts are friendly, while others are not. For example, if he were walking around town, and some phantom noticed he notices them, the phantom might just pick up and throw dela into incoming traffic, or into a wall, just to be a jerk. Some undead things are even nastier, so he likes to avoid them as much as possible. His solution to this is getting high. He is a bit of a drug addict when he wants to be, which is most of the time, and is usually on some drug or another which would not exactly be prescription. He does it because it has the sideeffect of temporarily making him unable to see the dead, while his mind isn't all there. This makes the dead less likely to attack him.

There are also helpful ghosts too, many of which have heard of Dela's reputation and come to his aid. They can help him fend off enemies with invisible punches of their own, they can lift him up and essentially fly him somewhere he wants to go, or sometimes they'll just be nice and pass him something like a cigarette lighter, or a gun. Whichever works really.

Now, the original story was that at some point Delavega had a girlfriend, but she got offed (and in his home town, they blamed it on him) by some supernatural creature Dela's been hoping to find ever since. Meanwhile though, he spends his time fighting all sorts of supernatural creatures in his spare time. Delavega is a bit of a shaman, but also occasionally a detective. Since he can actually talk to murder victims, he can usually pinpoint a suspect pretty quickly. So he'll usually solve crimes for people who ask him to, with little to no help from the police (who, for logical reasons, are pretty sure he's insane.)

But, he prefers the jobs with a bit of a supernatural twist. When I say supernatural, I mean believe me that there is more then just Ghosts out there to deal with. There are tons of baddies, ranging anywhere from trolls to necromancers to vampires, to Chupacabras or guys with removable heads. Delavega, by this point has come to believe that no matter how many wierd things you see, there is always one wierder and more powerful. For the nastier supernatural creatures, he hunts them.

Here are several characters that may be in the story.

Delavega (obviously): No one is really sure if Delavega is his real name, or if its a first or last name. Probably not. Delavega has essentially tried to lose sight of his past completely. Occasionally, he'll use a first name alias like "Patrick Delavega", but this alias changes so often that it's really useless to call him by it. If Delavega were to give his job a name, it would probably be something along the lines of a shaman or paladin. That being said, despite his past being fairly grim, he is not a particularily unhappy character. it is difficult to wipe a smile off his face, even if you punch it actually. Delavega often talks to himself, or his invisible dead friends, and sometimes even laughs at jokes no one else seems to hear. He gets incredibly high very often, and is essentially a partier when given the chance. He likes to make people smile. There are rumors he has cannabalistic tendencies, but that's not true. That's a rumor left behind from his home town. He's almost never serious, and when he is, you must have REALLY ticked him off. It should be mentioned, he swings both ways as far as sexual orientation goes.

August: A crow that follows Delavega around almost constantly. Though, August is actually a quite capable shape-shifter. He is in actuallity a 15 year old boy, who just happened to be saved at one point by delavega and travels with him. It's a nice set up actually, Delavega feeds him, he helps delavega out when he needs it. One wouldn't know they're actually friends just by talking to them. Very often delavega refers to August as "That useless Pidgeon", or "dumb bird", at which point August will usually drop something on his head. But despite this, they've been good friends for awhile.

Darius: A professor at Harvard University, and actually a prominent member of the undead. Darius is a lych, (basically an undead sorcerer) who has a dark history he is trying to leave behind him. He is a wise, and generally good hearted guy, masked behind all that synthetic human flesh. Actually, when Delavega and Darius first met, Delavega attempted to destroy him. Lych's are typically evil creatures in general, but they worked it out. Darius has lived for who knows how long, so has an almost encylopedia-like knowledge of the supernatural. So very often, he'll go right from teaching history at Harvard to teaching Delavega how best to take out a moss covered bone dragon, or whatever he has to deal with at the time. His history has more importance in the plot later...

West Linden: Delavega runs into West Linden almost completely by accident. West stumbles onto a site where a lot of supernatural activity is taking place, when Delavega basically pulls him by the hair out of the warzone. West has kindof been thrown into the group against his will, but goes with it. Him and Dela start out at odds, cause West doesn't believe in magic, the supernatural, ghosts, or even most other things. West, previously was a chartered accountant. He likes to read, and is a bit of a linguist in several languages, such as Latin, Spanish, and french, which actually help Delavega out a lot (many supernaturals speak in Latin, which Delavega can not speak. Also, a lot of supernatural texts are in latin). West is a crucial element when Delavega is going cross country, which is often. (No one but him knows what country he actually originates from, though many assume Australia.) West eventually becomes essentially dela's best friend (and maybe more then friends, depending on how the story goes o.o)

Grendal: "A character that just won't freakin die!" as delavega would say. Grendal, who takes his name from Beowulf, is a troll. he is a thin, slimy creature that is able to break most of his limbs at will, contort into various shapes, breathe underwater, climb up walls, and eats and slowly digests children. Trolls are anarchic creatures, and Grendal is no exception. But the people Grendal works for are powerful, so he gets to be a bit more of a threat. He woul be quite willing to start a war between humans and the supernatural.

I gotta log off, i'll continue this later.